The Secret of Life

Richard Dawkins - 2

A guy over at the Way Of The Mind Forum has drawn my attention to an article in the latest edition of Time which relates to what we've been discussing here. It's called God vs. Science. I haven't had chance to read the whole article yet but my eyes were drawn to the final paragraph, a quotation from the man I've previously described as an "evangelical atheist", Richard Dawkins. Needless to say, do go and read the article or buy the magazine, but I'd like to give the quote here because I find it so heartening. Dawkins says:

"What I am skeptical about is the idea that whatever wonderful revelation does come in the science of the future, it will turn out to be one of the particular historical religions that people happen to have dreamed up. When we started out and we were talking about the origins of the universe and the physical constants, I provided what I thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer. But it does seem to me to be a worthy idea. Refutable--but nevertheless grand and big enough to be worthy of respect. I don't see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur. They strike me as parochial. If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed."

Personally, I do find grandeur in Christianity if I discard some of the commonly touted ideas about it, but otherwise I find that by and large I agree with Dawkins here! Perhaps there is hope for consensus yet...

The Nature Of The Universe

(To see comments on recent posts, please click here for Vision, here for To Simply Be and here for Let's Pretend.)

In previous posts, I've mentioned Einstein's belief that our sense of separateness is "an optical delusion of consciousness" and the idea of unity, that all of us are essentially One. For the whole of this quotation from Einstein, please see this previous post. But what else do scientists have to say about all this? Does what we know of the natural world support the idea of Unity at all - or was Einstein just going off on a flight of fancy?

An interesting book to read in this respect is The Tao Of Physics by Fritjof Capra, first published in 1975, which draws parallels between modern science and Eastern religious & philosophical thought. In the words of one of the reviewers I've just come across on Amazon, Capra "demonstrates that both modern Western science and traditional Eastern spirituality share the same core truth: that the universe is one interconnected whole, a ceaseless flux of living energy of which we are all part". Does that sound familiar?

Many books making similar comparisons have followed, including The Self-Aware Universe by Amit Goswami and The Field by Lynne McTaggart. Such books tend to be treated with varying degrees of scepticism by scientists and it's very difficult for the lay reader to make an objective assessment of them. This is especially true if you're like me and too much quantum mechanics makes your head hurt. Where some of them fall short, perhaps, is in claiming that the science proves that the philosophical & spiritual ideas we're talking about are correct. What may be more accurate - yet surely still exciting - is that they hold out the tantalizing possibility that they may be right, that science and spirituality may indeed concur.

Certainly it is true to say that what we think of as solid matter is mainly empty space. The particles which comprise atoms are very tiny indeed, with a large proportion of empty space between them.  But even these particles are not solid matter as we experience it in everyday life. They appear to be more like waves and only assume a fixed position when someone tries to measure them. So are they waves or particles, a bit of both, or something else which we don't yet understand? These sub-atomic entities are the building blocks of our own bodies and the matter we see around us every day. So what is in dispute here is the very nature of the fabric of reality.

I've previously mentioned the web site spaceandmotion.com, a fascinating repository of quotations and information on science and philosophy, the (not so) hidden agenda of which is to promote The Wave Structure Of Matter, a theory which proposes that particles are not particles at all but standing waves, interacting with each other to produce the effect of a particle. This would mean that there is no matter at all in the way that we normally understand it. Everything That Is, including ourselves, are really a series of interacting waves.

The Theory of Loop Quantum Gravity takes things even further, proposing that the universe is merely information in a giant quantum computer, stored by a series of twists in space-time. This would mean that we and everything we see around us are all part of a vast network of space-time, and furthermore don't even really exist. Which might sound extremely surprising - except to Buddhists.

It is clear, then, that some very imaginative concepts are being proposed to explain the universe, and in this context the idea that we are all part of a continuous field of energy - as many people experience through meditation - does not seem at all ridiculous. This 'connectedness' seems to be further confirmed by 'non-local effects' or quantum entanglement, whereby 'particles' which are separated in space - sometimes by large distances - appear to influence each other.

The universe is a strange place - or perhaps it only appears to be strange because we don't understand it. And if the so-called solid matter we see around us is not only mainly empty space but not even matter at all, then perhaps we should be open to the possibility that the way we see the universe - and our place in it - is in need of substantial revision.

 

These may also be of interest:

What The Bleep Do We Know?

Unity Is Powerful

Over 300 Proofs of God's Existence

I thought you might be interested in this posting on Cassidy's MySpace blog: Over 300 Proofs of God's Existence. Hint: there aren't any good ones.
Just in case you were wondering,
Do I believe in god? Yes, but don't expect me to define it - I'm still working on that.
Can I prove that god exists? No.
Do I expect you to believe in god? Of course not - that's up to you.

How To Have It All

Those of you who are familiar with the mind-body-spirit shelves of your local bookshop will have heard of the idea that we all 'create our own reality': that we can create the world we want for ourselves simply through the power of our imagination. All we need to do is to imagine the mansion and the limousine and they can be ours.

I'm damned if I can get this to work for me. What about you?

I'm not saying that such an approach can't work, simply that there is an inherent difficulty that often tends to be overlooked: it isn't all that easy to think entirely positive thoughts. Some people can do it - and I rather suspect that they will be inherently successful people, who will have the mansion and the limousine - if that's what they want - even if they haven't read the 'how to' books at all. For the rest of us, each positive affirmation, each "Every day in every way I'm getting better and better!" tends to be balanced out by a distant echo of "No I'm bloody not!" or "This'll never work!" or the heart-sickeningly common "I don't deserve it!" We fail to create a positive reality for ourselves because (arguably) our own negative thoughts get in the way.

A lot of writers market techniques to get around this problem by finding ways to defuse such negative thoughts. Some of these books may be very successful. They can certainly make their writers a lot of money, and many people may find that such things work. But they are inherently sticking-plaster solutions. They don't address the root source of the negative thoughts: an attachment to the idea of having the house and the mansion, of having and doing and being particular things in the physical world.

As I discussed in the previous post, attachment to such transient things will always lead to unhappiness in the long run. Even the brand new car will rust. The mansion will crumble away. Even your brand new TFT screen will finally flicker and die. Sorry - I'm going to have to pause for a moment while I wipe the tears off the keyboard. But do you see where I'm going with this? It's only when you can break that attachment that unhappiness can finally be overcome. It's only when you no longer care for such transient things that you no longer have such negative feelings about them. It's only when you have learnt - by following Eckhart Tolle's teaching or whichever path you may choose - to identify instead with what Tolle calls "an unfathomable sense of peace" that you no longer find yourself muttering those unhelpful negative echoes.

Why should you think "It'll never work!" when you say an affirmation if you no longer care so deeply whether it works or not? And why should you say "I don't deserve it!" if you no longer judge yourself in terms of your worldly acquisitions, if  that "sense of peace" informs you that you have no reason to doubt your own worth.

It worries me here that I sound a bit like a street corner preacher, for they annoy me as much as they probably do you. But I'm not talking here about buying into some rigid belief system, which is going to bind your brains and bypass rational thought. I'm talking here about something which is real and which you can experience for yourself, irrespective of what you may - or may not - believe.

And when you are there, you can finally have it all.  "When your inner dependency on form is gone," says Tolle, "the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part".

Why is that? Because now that you no longer need them, you are no longer afraid that you won't get them. Neither are you afraid of losing what you have. Your negative thoughts are no longer pushing these things away from you. You can finally have your heart's desire - and you can enjoy it. Yet it is your heart's desire no longer.

 

These may also be of interest:

The Heart of The Secret

What If I Lose This?

Equanimity

Multi-Tasking The Moment

I'd like to respond to a large proportion of Pauls' comment on "Flatpack Fun", so for convenience, I'll paste it in here:

Paul said: Tsk, Simon, the essence of humour is observation. And timing. The *two* essences of humour are... Anyway, maybe a Tibetan Buddhist would sit on the floor, but I doubt you'll find many Western Buddhists who'd choose to. Not with these knees, anyway. A duff bit of stereotyping, in short.

Hmm. I did pause for thought (briefly) before using the joke about sitting on the floor but I decided to go ahead with it because a) I thought it was funny enough (yes, yes, it was only my opinion...) and b) the butt of the piece was not really Buddhists at all but me and my terrible skills at DIY. Paul is right to take me to task however, as such stereotyping is scarcely desirable in a blog whose purpose is not only to entertain but also to try to throw some light on the underlying truths of our existence. I guess in walking the tightrope between the two, I'm bound to take a tumble from time to time, so when that happens it's helpful for people to point out that it's actually me who's lying speadeagled on the floor.

Paul continued: I always find listening to music works for me as a way of tent-pegging myself into the present moment, though I tend to grow physically restless, or start dozing, if I just sit listening to music. Some mindless menial task, combined with music listening is my perfect combination. Washing-up is not bad, but doesn't tend to take very long. Painting large expanses of exterior woodwork is another good one, but can only be deployed infrequently. Ironing a basket of clothes is ideal - needs to be done every week, and takes an hour or so. Just long enough for a long symphony or twenty tracksworth of iPod shuffling. Somehow my mind can just switch back and forth between the music and the ironing, always fully intent on one or the other, and totally rooted in the present moment.

Paul's remarks about being in the moment suggest that he's much better at multi-tasking than I am. I too like listening to something while I'm doing boring jobs like ironing or washing up, but doing both is such a challenge for my brain that I don't then have any spare capacity left to appreciate what Paul has previously called "the sheer wonderment of being where and when you are". Isn't it Buddhist practice to do only one thing at a time? This makes sense in the light of my experience, for the additional capacity is then available to actually notice what's there in the moment: to be aware of that heightened sense of reality which makes the moment so special. I guess it's horses for courses though. If music along with the ironing works for you, Paul, then go with it. I'd be interested to know what happens if you cut out the music though - and still try and be in the moment.

Does anyone else out there have experiences to add?

As Good as God

Many thanks to Harry and Paul for their comments on the previous post. (See them here.) I'll just pick up on Harry's quote from Eric Maisel's "The Van Gogh Blues":

"That something exists which is 'as good as God' is not at all the same state of affairs as something existing that is God."

But why isn't it - at least for practical purposes - especially when you consider that most of us didn't have any fixed idea of what god was in the first place? It strikes me that this would be a "win-win" scenario, with all the benefits of having a god but without the ardent believers being able to say "I told you so".

Richard Dawkins

I notice there's a new book from that evangelical atheist Richard Dawkins: "The God Delusion". The title says it all! There's an interesting review in The Sunday Times by Rod Liddle which makes many of the points I might have raised myself. In case you are interested, you can find it here.